PREHISTORIC ARCHÆOLOGY

Summary

While the prehistoric antiquities of Cambridgeshire are far from scanty in amount, yet it must be admitted that their character does not lead one to infer that the district was ever the centre of great activity or the scene of events of fundamental importance in determining the future history of our land. (The present account will not consider the history of the monastery of Ely, nor the events which render it so conspicuous from the historical standpoint, especially in the eleventh century.)

If one studies the nature of the locality, it becomes evident why prehistoric Cambridgeshire should present this particular character; for a county comprising so much fenland as that of Cambridge did until the seventeenth century, would naturally be little more than a refuge for those who by stress of circumstance were unable to subsist on the richer lands by which it was surrounded.

The creation of the county of Cambridgeshire is ascribed, though with small show of evidence, to Edward the elder son of Alfred the Great and to his sister. To quote a recent historian of the county, Cambridgeshire is “a long strip of territory bounded on the east by the ancient East Anglian counties, and elsewhere by arbitrary lines the exact delimitation of which was due, doubtless, to long-forgotten local reasons of the tenth century.